


machine learning

by bugsuit



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-03 20:31:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12154239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bugsuit/pseuds/bugsuit
Summary: Curie and Preston go to visit Danse at Listening Post Bravo. Numbers are crunched, words are exchanged. It goes something like terrible.(spoilers for Paladin Danse's storyline)





	1. personal records

**Author's Note:**

> well i write a ton but i never post any, so i guess i've got to post something sooner or later if i want to keep my fanfic writer's license. so, uh, (travis miles voice) here's a thing
> 
> some things to set you up: it's not about her, but my sole survivor is called Levi so she's mentioned sometimes (calling the sole survivor "Sole" or "Nora" makes me brain not write good. so it's Levi. but i mostly kept her out of it! this is about three companions being awkward in a bunker. also it's platonic, but i mean, squint enough and you could probably call some of it ship fodder. thanks for reading. i haven't edited. enjoy my mess

Curie is a researcher “at heart” (idiom; attribution: M. Valentine; context: casual discussion, Valentine Detective Agency) and _a Hell of a Doc, lady_ (slang; attribution: M. Deacon; context: application of Stimpak and bandages to gunshot wound in left shin, The Castle). She is also “one of the sweetest people ever” (attribution: Mme. Wright; context: discussion over alcohol, Dugout Inn).

Curie trusts this data. It comes from good sources. She does not let it go to her head, so to speak - but she trusts it. They are things said in confidence, fully believed by the speakers as far as she can tell. She treasures these words like precious research, and if anyone asked, she could not find the words to explain why.

Once, not so long ago, she was a _treacherous robot-turned-synth, technology gone wrong, not to be trusted_ (attribution: M. Danse; context: overheard from the garden, The Castle).

This one is bad data. She knows it is, but it was the first time she realised humans cannot delete things from their memory as easily as a General Atomics Miss Nanny robot. It stuck in her head and refused to budge, and she's had to try to ignore that errant data for a while.

Now, though, Danse seems to have changed his mind. She knows this because Danse sent her a holotaped message to that effect, to which she is now listening for a second time with the use of a public terminal the General built in the Castle.

 _“...You aren’t the only one to whom I feel I owe an apology,”_ says Danse’s voice, _“but you are the first of - I hope - several listeners. I don’t ask your forgiveness. Just that you hear me out.”_

She sits back in her chair and picks at her nails (there is dirt there because she’s been gardening, learning that sanitation sometimes takes a back seat to practicality) and picks apart his voice in careful analysis. At first she thought he was sick, because his voice is scratchy and his nose is a little stuffy, but now she recognises the waver in his voice as a sign he’s been crying instead.

Curie stands up after a moment’s thought and gently pushes the door closed. Someone like Danse, she thinks, would value that kind of privacy.

 _“She may not have told you. Or maybe she told everyone. I don’t think it matters. On the off chance she said nothing…”_ There’s a pause here, and the sound of a pencil being fiddled with against the surface of a desk. _“I’m a synth. I don’t know… when, or how the Institute replaced the original Pala- the original Danse. Or_ why.” The pen is set down; he exhales the word _God_ very quietly, away from the recording device; Curie didn’t hear it the first time, but now she’s focusing on all the little details, she can even hear him shifting in his seat. _“But it’s part of why I’m recording this message. I owe a lot of people an apology… It was the General’s idea. I thought I’d start with you.”_

His thoughts are scattered, thinks Curie. He is exhibiting signs of stress, and yet to her understanding there is no one else in the room to hear him, and holotapes can be remade. She comes to the conclusion that he did this in one take on purpose, and realises that’s a very earnest thing to do. She is fairly sure Danse is doing his best. Curie relaxes back in her chair and picks up a pencil, fiddles with it, puts it down again. On the tape, Danse does the same.

 _“I’ll just start. I… I know I haven’t been fair to you. The things I’ve said… The things I thought I believed, they… they’re still me. There’s no other version of me to take credit for that. And that’s the point,”_ he wagers. The pen taps audibly against the table twice while he buys time to think. _“I realise now that being a synth… it doesn’t absolve someone of their actions. What I do and what I feel - what I_ think _I feel - it’s up to me, to the person Danse was, or is. Was,”_ he corrects himself again, and sighs. _“My point is that I’ve been unfair to you. To my understanding you were created by - was it General Atomics?”_ He slides some papers around, double-checks. He’s using notes, then. Perhaps the General helped him with the details. _“Right. And then you were transferred into a synth body. And I said some things… I believed a few things about that. I’m sure you already know how the Brotherhood of Steel feels about technological experimentation of that nature. But according to our… our mutual friend, you became more than that.”_

He’s getting stuck somewhere in the details. Curie finds herself wishing he would get on with it, no matter how much she values clarity. She suspects Danse is not very good at apologising.

 _“She… she said the same about me. That I’m more than just a machine. And I…”_ His voice catches. He clears his throat and tries again. His voice is muffled this time. Curie listens carefully, and pieces together an image of him with his head bowed behind his clasped hands. _“I want so badly to believe that. But I’ve been here for three months now, and that thought still seems so far off. Distant.”_ He gathers his thoughts and then lifts his head, but he’s still speaking quietly and gravely into his folded hands. _“I realise now that I’m at an impasse. Either Maxson and the rest of the Brotherhood were right - either you’re tools of the Institute, the dark results of ill-conceived technological carelessness, you have no right to exist - and that means me, as well. Either you’re monsters, and I am, too...”_ He sighs heavily and she hears him turn away from the microphone. _“Or else you’re not. The only way I get to be human is if you, and Nick Valentine, and - Hancock, the ghoul, everyone - you all have to be human, as well. And that means I owe everyone a hell of an apology. This whole time, I followed the Brotherhood because I believed in the first option. I was wrong. I have to be wrong.”_

Curie hits the pause button and considers this. He is afraid, she thinks, of admitting any of this out loud. It explains why his voice is wavering so much, and why he sounds nothing like the cold, measured, disapproving Paladin Danse she met just a few months before. But he is afraid of the alternative, as well.

Curie picks up the pencil and writes _existentialism, trapped, bargaining_ on the edge of her notes, and underlines it twice. She draws an arrow and points it to another hastily-scribbled word followed by a question mark: _depression?_ After a moment’s hesitation, she also writes down _horrible apology; confront._

She presses play.

 _“...I’m sorry for what I said. About you. To you. Everything. I’m not… I don’t think I can be that man any more... You’re not who I thought you were.”_ Danse shuffles his papers around a bit more, and then slides them softly to one side. _“You’re more human than I am. And I’m sorry that I ever tried to claim otherwise. This is P-… this is… Danse. Signing off.”_ There’s a long silence here, and the first time she listened, Curie thought it ended there. She lets it play this time, suspicious, and sure enough there’s the sound of a chair creaking and someone standing up. He draws close to the recording device, fumbles to find the off button, and hesitates. _“...Thanks for… hearing me out,”_ says Danse, very very quietly. _“I won’t bother you again.”_ The holotape clicks.

Curie thinks things over for a little while, eyes reading and re-reading the title - _“To Curie”_ \- and the timestamp while she lets her mind wander.

“Oh, Danse, you are terrible at this,” she sighs finally. “Someone really _must_ speak to you.”

This is the only tape he’s made so far - she thinks. It would probably be for the best if he didn’t make more. Which draws only one conclusion.

“Mon _dieu,_ it will have to be me.”

What a mess.

She stands a little while later, pops out the holotape and slips it neatly into her bag between some folded clothes. She collects a couple of old medical textbooks from the shelf by her bed (ones with chapters, at least, on mental health) and tucks them in as well. She collects some other odds and ends, things that aren’t hers but she knows the Minutemen won’t miss, and tries to lift the bag. She frowns and begrudgingly removes the textbooks.

Curie is not sure where to begin looking for him, but she knows the one person who will. She is also not foolish enough to think she would be able to travel without an escort; medicine, not gunplay, is her strong point, and besides - nobody is _that_ independent.

 

* * *

 

“Er,” says the General, swiping a thumb over the lenses of her goggles. It leaves a streak of blue coolant that’s arguably worse than the soot that was on there already. She doesn’t try to correct her mistake. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, actually.”

Curie shakes her head. “It is the only logical course of action! Not that you aren’t doing a wonderful job of supporting him, Madame - but one person cannot be there all the time, non? You have other duties, and there is only one General. But there are many medics, and I-”

“Is this about the tape?” asks Levi, reaching for a cloth to wipe off her hands. “Did he ask for you?”

There’s an ancient, dismembered Protectron unit on her work table, and it’s surrounded by piles of rust flakes where the General has been chipping away at the decay. She must have hit something important in the process, because there’s a growing puddle of cooling fluid beginning to drip over the edge of the table. Curie shuffles a step to the side to avoid staining her shoes.

“Non, he did not ask. But I listened _very_ carefully to what Monsieur Danse had to say. I believe he is in dire need of company-”

“D’you really think you can help him?” Levi asks sharply.

Curie knows the General too well to assume this is sarcasm, even though it sounds like it. She spent too long letting Levi trip her up on double-speak to be anything but an expert on it now. This, she knows, isn’t sarcasm - it’s a challenge.

Curie straightens up, squares her shoulders, and nods. “I think I can help him to help himself,” she declares.

“He’s delicate,” says Levi. Curie suspects she isn’t just talking about the synth situation. “Can you promise me you’ll step lightly?”

“On my Hippocratic Oath,” Curie responds. “I do not know Monsieur Danse well, Madame. But…” she lowers her voice and leans in closer, “...I know now that he is a synth. It seems he is not coping. Is that correct?”

“Mm.” The noise is unreadable. Levi stares at her - at least, Curie thinks she’s staring at her, but the goggles are too opaque to tell. All at once, the General’s face loses the pinched, grim look and eases into an approving smile. She holds out her hand. “Listening Post Bravo,” she says. “Straight north from the National Guard Training Yard. Look for the big helipad. Take Preston with you, and fill him in on you-know-what. Yeah?”

Curie returns the handshake firmly, like Levi taught her (a handshake, Levi says, is all about conviction). “I will do my best, Madame. We will leave immediately. Do you have any pointers?”

Levi shakes her head. Curie is halfway out of the door before Levi perks up and waggles a soldiering iron at her. “Wait! Yes. Don’t just walk in. Both of you ought to stand, er, on either side of the elevator. Behind the doors.”

“Will Monsieur Danse shoot us?” Curie asks, pressing a hand affectedly to her chest.

“No,” says Levi, “but the robots will. Remember _Arx-Ferrum._ We put in an auth code. Shout that.”

“Oh, how clever!” Curie claps her hands and gives a bow of the head. “Thank you, General!” She does not say what she’s thinking, which is _Danse must be in so much trouble to need so many robots to guard him._ She has a feeling Levi wouldn’t appreciate it.

“Thank _you._ And, hey, while you’re there, see if you can’t convince him to come join the rest of us. He’s dug in there like a fucking tick. Man needs a shower.” Levi waves her away, adjusting her goggles. There’s a ring of black muck around each of her eyes and Curie can’t see a single logical reason for it to be there. “Now go on, off with you. Danse won’t pep talk himself.”

 

* * *

 

Preston Garvey is a watchful man, and Curie is grateful. Right now, they are hiding in an alley just north of Goodneighbour. Under the street lights, what looks to be a mutated dog prowls by, huffing wet breaths at the concrete.

Curie’s hand tightens on Preston’s arm. She breathes ever so softly into his ear. “Can it smell us?”

He shakes his head. “Woulda had us by now.”

They wait until the dog(?) is further up the street, and then quickly cross together and duck into the next alley. Curie waits until they’re far out of earshot before sighing in relief.

“That was close!” she remarks. “How did you know it was coming? I heard nothing.”

Preston adjusts his grip on his gun. “I didn’t. There were Super Mutants on the roof nearby. I just kind of assumed there’d be one prowling around.”

Curie snaps her fingers. “Oh! Then it was contextual logic. Will you teach me these things, Monsieur Garvey?”

“Oh. Sure.” He smiles at her. “I’ll tell you what I know… but it’s more just something you’ll pick up as you go along.”

She brightens. “I see. Like an… instinct?”

“Yeah.” Preston holds out his hand to stop her, and when she looks down, there’s a crack in the road full of muddy water. “You’d better work on that sooner than later, I guess. Uh - no offense...”

“Oh!” She lifts her foot and steps over it, earnestly grateful. “None taken, Monsieur Garvey. I am still getting used to… not _floating._ Thank you.”

They curve their way around the rusted shape of what used to be a car, picked clean for parts until only the frame is left. Sometimes Curie used to think that might be her, in a few hundred years. If anyone ever found their way into their side of the Vault, after her core ran out, perhaps she’d have ended up a metal husk as well.

It’s reassuring to know that can’t physically happen to her any more, but it’s even more reassuring to know that there are people around her who would never let it. She could have stayed a robot forever, and perhaps people like Preston Garvey and Nick Valentine and Piper Wright would have kept her safe.

The pleasant, warm feeling that gives her, Curie thinks, is worth the loss of nuclear thrusters and a laser weapon. It is also a wonderful motivator. Learning anything new is not just for herself, or for science any more - it is also, in part, for her friends. To pay them back in some small way, she must become more than what she was.

“So,” Preston says suddenly, “what do you know about this old Listening Post that I don’t?”

“Oh,” Curie replies, flushing. She’s forgotten to fill him in. She _did_ promise. “My apologies, Monsieur Garvey-”

“You know, just ‘Preston’ is fine.” He looks amused. “Carry on.”

Curie clears her throat softly and tries again, more than slightly flustered. “Oh. Well. Yes. _Preston._ I… Monsieur Danse, he needs our help.”

“I figured that part. But why?”

“He is a synth,” she says simply, seeing no reason to beat around the bush. Preston’s head practically snaps around to stare at her, and some small part of her reports what she knows about whiplash. “I believe this fact was only recently discovered. I think Monsieur Danse has only known for a few months.”

Preston gave a low whistle. “So _that’s_ why he’s hiding out. Nobody’s seen him in… well, months, come to think of it. Just the General.” He paused. “Man. That’s _crazy._ Paladin Danse.”

“I do not think he is a Paladin any longer. He is in a bad way, I think,” Curie explains sadly, shaking her head. “He does not want visitors. But! We are going. Sometimes what someone wants is not what they need - non?”

Preston gives a dry smile and a nod. “Yeah, you’ve got that right. Maybe you’re getting this instinct thing after all.”

“Oh, no, no. It is my programming - oh, _non!_ I mean,” she corrects herself quickly, “it is just logic! I have read _many_ books on the subject. The data I have suggests Monsieur Danse is suffering from some form of psychological break. It is my duty of care to do what I can for him.”

“So you’re a head doctor now?”

Curie looks sheepish. “I am not qualified to be a psychiatrist. But - like most people in the Commonwealth - I do not think Monsieur Danse has anyone else. It is just us: Levi, you, me, and the rest of his friends.” She assesses her words for a moment, and then shakes her head. “When I said ‘duty of care’, I suppose I meant it more as a friend than as a doctor.”

“Friends, huh,” Preston remarks. “You know, Danse doesn’t strike me as someone who’ll take kindly to us showing up and declaring we’re there to help. Especially if he’s… y’know... just found out he’s a synth.” He sighs and gives her an inquiring sidelong glance. “...You do know we barely know each other, right? Me and Danse, I mean.”

Curie nods. “It is the same for me. He has said some… ah, questionable things, in the past! But he is a friend of General Levi, and she cares about him. Surely her trust must stand for something. I believe that makes us his friends, even if the feeling is not… entirely mutual.”

There’s a strange silence between them, and for a moment she thinks Preston might object - but then he breaks out into a warm smile, the kind that makes Curie feel reassured.

“You’re really something,” he says. “Weren’t you a robot just a little while ago? I’d wager you’re more human than most people.”

She adds this one to the imaginary filing system she has going in her mind. _More human than most people; attribution: M. Garvey._ Good data. She can see from his face that he believes it.

Her heart feels strange, but in a good way. Curie beams back at him.

“Thank you, Monsieur Garvey.”

 

* * *

 

“Alright. How are we gonna play this?”

Curie’s finger hovers over the elevator button. She glances over her shoulder. Preston is leaning on the old desk in the middle of the room, on which she left her own weapon - the laser pistol lent to her by the General. Preston’s musket is pointed safely at the floor, but he seems to expect a full discussion on the matter.

She turns and shrugs. “Well… We take the elevator, and then I use the code on the Protectron units, and then we walk in and say hello to Monsieur Danse. Is that not simple enough?”

Preston looks suspicious. “Protectrons?”

“Fear not, Monsieur Garvey, General Levi gave me a safety code. Our entry will not cause them to fire. Though… you may wish to stand out of view until I have finished saying it!”

“Huh.” Preston stares her down, calculating. He still looks uncomfortable. “But what about Danse? You really think he’ll be okay with us just waltzing in? I was thinking maybe we think of what we’re gonna say first...”

“Monsieur Garvey,” she says curtly, pressing the call button with her thumb, “sometimes the best course of action is also the simplest. You can leave the speaking to me. I am told my bedside manner is impeccable.” _(Attribution: M. Codsworth; context: comforting Dogmeat after bullet removal.)_ “Monsieur Danse will not shoot at us. You should most certainly put your gun away.”

Preston shifts from one foot to the other, adjusting his grip on the laser musket.

He’s nervous, and Curie understands why - this is a delicate situation, and he has a point. She is no fool, and she knows Danse won’t be happy to see them. But this is more her forte than shooting ferals or chasing off roaches. It is after all much harder to aim a weapon when it isn’t built into your systems, but her personality - she believes - has not changed. Preston is going to have to trust her.

The elevator pings, and she steps inside, shifting to the back corner and casting her gaze on Preston. She speaks softly. “Please come with me, Monsieur Garvey. You can help Danse just as well as I can, but you _must_ leave your gun behind.”

Preston sighs. “Yeah.” He reluctantly uncurls his fingers from around the musket and leans it against the desk. “Yeah, okay. I’m coming. Just… don’t make any sudden moves when we meet him. I’ve got a bad feeling about what frame of mind we’ll find him in down there.”

He joins her with a deep breath, and Curie presses the button.

“You know there are scorch marks on the back of the elevator, right?”


	2. too much too soon

Before the doors open, they hear the tell-tale clanking of Protectron units on patrol, and step carefully into the corners. As the elevator opens, Curie calls out the code, her voice as clear as she can make it, and the clanking stops.

“Arx Ferrum! We are authorised! Please, do not shoot!”

“...Authorisation code accepted,” one of the units responds, its voice slow and juddery. “Resuming patrol.”

Preston holds up his hand to stop her before she can move, and quickly takes off his hat. He waves it in front of the doors, leaning back just in case. Nothing happens. He waggles it experimentally, and when nothing continues to happen, he puts it back on and lets out the breath he’d been holding.

“Okay,” he mutters, “I guess we’re good.”

They both step out together, and Curie can almost feel Preston’s tension in the air between them. She would be lying if she claimed not to be on edge as well, but she reminds herself of the General’s words. Danse would not shoot them.

The room is filled with the sound of marching robots, and not much else. There’s a break in one wall, right at the back, that someone has patched over with wooden boards. An empty suit of power armour stands dormant in a frame. There’s a corner they can’t see around, and the rest is just old monitoring panels and heavy-looking crates. Curie shivers.

They split apart for a moment to step around one of the three Protectrons, and Curie notes the panelling on all of the robots has been tampered with. Levi’s work, or else Danse’s - perhaps both. She has seen them working on their respective sets of armour before, focused and quiet, and she’d thought it strangely companionable at the time. Perhaps this was a joint effort.

“Hello?” she tries, keeping her voice gentle. “Monsieur Danse? It is only us - Curie, and Preston Garvey! Please, do not be alarmed. We are coming in.”

“You think he heard you?”

They round the corner, gingerly stepping out from behind some crates, and Curie almost jumps out of her skin.

Danse is slumped in an old chair in front of a desk, a terminal sitting in front of him with its command line blinking. His arms are folded over his chest, his head is dipped forwards, and his eyes are closed. For a moment, Curie almost fears the worst - but, to her relief, his chest is moving slowly up and down.

“Guess that’s a no,” Preston murmurs, very quietly.

“He is sleeping,” she observes in a whisper. “Oh, it seems such a shame to wake him. Perhaps we should come back another time-”

Danse stirs. In a flash, his eyes flick open, and suddenly his chair is pushed back and one hand is slammed on the desk for support and the other has fished a pistol from somewhere - had he been holding onto it while he slept?

“Whoa!” barks Preston, immediately holding up his hands. “Easy! It’s just us!”

To Curie’s dismay, Danse doesn’t immediately lower the gun. His eyes are smudged around the edges with dark circles, but his pupils are sharp, panicked; his breathing is too fast altogether. For once, she is glad she can’t detect his heart rate from a distance any more - she’s afraid of what the number might look like.

“Monsieur Danse, please! We are unarmed!” She follows Preston’s example, sticking her hands in the air. “We are only here to talk!”

Danse’s eyes flick between them, almost like he doesn’t really see them - and then, uneasily, his muscles un-tense just enough to let the gun slowly point at the ground. He takes a second or two to gather his thoughts, still staring wildly at them, and then his arm goes slack and he slams the gun onto the desk like he’s trying to pretend it didn’t happen.

“I… My apologies,” he mutters. His voice is hoarse. “I wasn’t expecting…”

“Guests?” Preston tries, when Danse doesn’t pick up the sentence again.

Danse follows Preston’s gaze down at himself, and he seems to realise he’s covered in sweat and plaster dust and that he’s wearing a mechanic’s jumpsuit that has seen better days. He reaches up to brush some stray hairs out of his face, and says nothing. He doesn’t look at them, fixing his eyes on the floor instead. His beard is longer and scruffier than Curie remembers it.

“You… startled me,” he says awkwardly, as though anyone might be startled enough into pointing a gun at people whose faces they ought to recognise.

“That is understandable, Monsieur Danse. We have intruded into your bunker. But, please - may we stay? We only want to talk.”

He dearly wants to say no. Curie can read that straight off his face, which is good assurance that she’ll be able to make do without a medical sensor array.

“If,” he begins uncertainly, and then clears his throat. “...If you like.”

“It’s your safe house,” reiterates Preston, just to be sure.

Curie’s eyes stray to the empty bottle on his desk, almost-but-not-quite hidden behind the terminal.

Danse shifts very slightly to lean against the desk, blocking her view. He swallows hard. His mouth is dry. “Did Levi send you?”

“Non,” says Curie. “We sent ourselves. Would you like some water, Monsieur Danse?”

“No. I have some.” He turns, snatching up the bottle (it’s empty, judging by the noise it makes when he accidentally taps it against the terminal) and drops it into a wastebasket on the way past. He disappears through a doorway, half-blocked with mud from some old cave-in. The door itself has been removed and set against a wall. “Stay as long as you need,” he calls over his shoulder, but it’s dismissive. He doesn’t want them here. Curie isn’t sure why he’s pretending.

When she moves to follow him, Preston’s hand clamps on her shoulder.

“Give Danse a minute. I doubt we’re doing his pride any favours by showing up while he’s in that kind of a state.”

Curie sighs. “Did you see the bottle? He is in a bad way, don’t you think?”

“Bad enough.” Preston loosens his grip, patting her reassuringly on the shoulder before taking his hand away. “You sure you’ve got this under control?”

“We shall see,” she replies simply.

Neither of them moves to take Danse’s seat. Curie wanders a little, straying over to the back corner. There’s a couple of workbenches that she didn’t see when they entered. On one, there’s a small collection of circuit boards and wiring, like it’s been dumped there out of someone’s pockets (she suspects she knows whose). On the other, there’s a laser rifle, minus a few key parts. A couple of wooden boxes lie beside it, marked in scratchy pencil. Her fingertips stray over these for a moment, and she reads the labels. Gun mods. Some fairly lethal ones, by the looks of it.

Preston goes to lean up against one of the old, defunct monitoring stations. He folds his arms and fidgets with his hat, but otherwise he seems calm. At least Danse isn’t aiming a gun at them any more.

When Danse returns, he’s changed out of the questionable jumpsuit and into a marginally cleaner shirt and pants, a leather jacket shrugged carelessly on over the top. He’s also finger combed his hair back, to no real effect than making it look even more unwashed than it did. He’s carrying a new bottle - this one is labelled “ _CLEAN”_ in Levi’s bold handwriting, and hopefully does not contain alcohol.

“So,” he pipes up, his voice only slightly smoother than it was before and just as terse as ever, “what is it?”

Curie stops fiddling with the boxes of gun mods, turning to give him her full attention. “You sent me a holotape, Monsieur Danse.”

He freezes, bottle halfway to his lips. “I did. Yes.” Danse waits nervously, like he expects her to evaluate it.

Curie mercifully does so before his resolve has time to break. “It was a kind thought, Monsieur Danse, and I understood it very clearly. But I think,” she adds carefully, “you should not make any more.”

“...I see,” he says, frowning.

“You should apologise in person,” Curie explains quickly. “And you should do it _much_ more carefully!”

“Oh,” he says again, and takes a swig from the bottle, buying himself some time to think of a reply. The tactic doesn’t work particularly well. “...I’m… sorry.”

“Oh, non, not to me! To Monsieur Valentine, and Monsieur Hancock - and whoever else you believe you owe an apology. _I_ understood you very clearly, Monsieur Danse. And you are forgiven. But you really _must_ learn to be more tactful before you apologise to the others!”

Preston stares at her, like he can’t quite believe what she’s saying. Didn’t they come here to cheer him up? This feels like the opposite. Preston shifts uncomfortably. “Uh… Curie?”

She ignores him, and steps a bit closer. “Monsieur Danse, I will happily volunteer to help you to formulate a more proper apology.”

“Hm,” says Danse again, eyeing her like she’s a radscorpion.

“But more importantly, General Levi is worried about you,” she says firmly, and closes the rest of the gap between them. She takes his hand, the one not holding the bottle, and pats it consolingly. It’s surprisingly warm. She tries to think of this and not the fact that it’s sweaty. “We are _all_ worried about you. You should come back with us-”

“Let go of my hand,” he mutters, the words not quite coming out until he forces them.

Curie does so. “My apologies, Monsieur Danse, I had read that physical contact is a-”

“I’m not coming,” he says quickly. “Just… forget I’m here. I won’t send any more tapes.” Danse steps back to put some more space between them, and leans against his desk. His thumb worries at the label on the bottle, picking the corner loose. “I’m… staying. I... You should go.”

Preston opens his mouth, but Curie beats him to it. “Non, Monsieur Danse, you misunderstand. We are here to keep you company - that is correct, isn’t it, Preston?”

“Uh…” Preston tries and fails to read her face. He raises his eyebrows in questioning, but he goes along with it. “Uh-huh.” Either Curie is completely failing to read the situation, or she knows exactly what she’s doing. Either seems just as likely.

Danse sighs. “Lev- the General. She visits. I don’t… No one else has to come here.”

“As your friends, we most certainly do,” Curie insists, and pats her bag cheerfully. “Besides - I have brought games! We can - how does it go? - ‘make a night of it’!”

Preston barely manages to hold in the sigh of _oh my God,_ but nobody is looking at him.

Danse doesn’t move or speak for a long time. Slowly, in a combined haze of incredulity and defeat, he sinks into the desk chair.

“I should…” He trails off, staring blankly at the floor instead of at Curie or Preston. The silence he leaves is filled with the sound of Protectrons clanking rhythmically back and forth. “I should clean up,” he says eventually, and by the look on Preston’s face that’s not what he expected. “Come back in… one hour. Alright?” His eyes turn up to meet Curie’s, and for a moment she can read everything going on in his head at once and her heart aches for him. “I... need some time.”

“Of course,” she replies immediately, to his evident relief. “May we leave our things? Monsieur Garvey and I will… take a walk!”

Danse hesitantly gestures in the affirmative. Curie waves Preston over and they file into the elevator. By the time they turn around, Danse is already out of his seat and swiping robotic clutter up off the floor. Preston wonders if it’s even his mess. The General isn’t known for her organisational skills, ironically enough.

“We will be back soon! Expect us, Monsieur Danse!”

Once the elevator doors shut and the whirr of the counterweight starts up, Curie takes a deep breath and presses her hand to her chest. She lets out a long, affected sigh.

“That was _terrifying,”_ she remarks.

Preston puts a hand on her shoulder and pats it gently. “I know a lot of people who wake up like that these days. Don’t hold it against him.”

“He is... delicate. That was the word the General used.” She pauses, then strokes a hand through her hair and leans defeatedly against the wall of the elevator. “Oh, but I promised her that I would be gentle! I do not think that was gentle at all. Human interaction is so much harder now that I am attuned to these - feelings! Sadness, and - hmm, righteousness? It is so messy!”

“I think I know what you mean,” Preston replies, as the lift comes to a halt and the doors slide open. He steps out and retrieves their weapons, handing Curie her gun grip-first. “You’ve gotta be careful not to go in seeming like you think you know best. Not many people take kindly to that. Even if you really do know best.” He nudges the door open with his foot, and Curie follows him out into the waning sunlight. “Don’t take it personally. Danse is one hell of a soldier, if he got to be a Paladin. You don’t often have to stop and take other people’s advice when you get that good. Plus he’s in a real bad place. Just trust me - he needs time.”

Curie looks at him, studying his face, but she can’t assess people at a glance like she used to. The little markers that point out strained facial muscles, the ones that tell her when someone is hiding something, just aren’t there to help her any more. Curie goes with her gut, which says there are things Preston thinks that he isn’t ready to tell her, and so she does not ask.

“I fear I am out of my depth,” she admits finally.

Preston shakes his head. “You know, for what it’s worth, I actually think your approach was working.”

“He was distressed…”

“He’s gonna be. We barged in without warning. The man’s trust levels are at an all-time low right now, and between you and me, I don’t think he had much trust to go around in the first place.” Preston smiles at her, trying to be reassuring. “Listen, like I said, don’t take it personal. I think you got through to him back there. Just keep doing whatever it is you’re doing. Either he’ll come around, or he won’t. We’ll just have to do our best.”

For a while they just stand outside, letting the silence fall neatly between them. It’s not an uncomfortable one, but neither of them wants to break it.

Curie holsters her gun and turns around to face the bunker, stepping backwards away from it and tracing the outline of it with her eyes. Preston watches her curiously, but says nothing.

“I am going to gather a few things,” she declares, finally. “Monsieur Garvey, could you please look for some silt beans? My analysis of this terrain suggests there might be some nearby.”

“Oh, uh… sure.” He eyes her suspiciously. “Are you sure you’re okay on your own?”

“I will not stray too far. I already know what I am looking for.”

 

* * *

 

When Curie and Preston arrive back at the bunker an hour later, it’s immediately apparent that Danse has not wasted a moment.

The clutter and dust has been removed - or, at least, swept into corners - and the desk has been pulled out into the middle of the room, leaving the terminal on the floor and out of the way. Two more chairs have been dragged out of the back room and arranged them around the desk - two on the side nearest the door, one missing its backrest on the other. The Protectrons are back in their charging pods.

At the sound of the elevator, Danse hurries out of the back room. An active radio is tucked under one arm, and the other pinches the necks of three bottles between his knuckles. He dumps all of these on the desk, casting a wary glance up at the elevator like he isn’t quite expecting Curie’s smiling face to be on the other side of the doors.

“Hey,” he forces out, and busies himself with tuning the radio.

“Greetings again, Monsieur Danse!” she calls cheerfully. “We have given you enough time, correct?”

“Correct,” he replies gruffly.

“My, but you have been busy!” Curie exclaims, casting a quick look around the room.

Danse looks up again, picking out the details: Curie has a large handful of flowers and bean plants, and Preston is carrying the flag from upstairs. “So have you,” he observes. “You do know I have everything I need…?”

“Non, you do not. Alcohol and Cram do not constitute a balanced diet.” Curie places her plant collection on the desk and fetches her bag from where she left it by the elevator. “I am going to make a proper meal for us to share.”

Danse is about to point out that there’s no kitchen in here, and that if they expect him to leave the bunker to make a fire they’ve got another thing coming - but his mouth seals itself when Curie pulls a portable hotplate and a pot from her bag. _Of course._

“Curie, where d’you want-?”

She speaks quickly, and leaves no room for argument. “On the wall, if you please. It is too drab in here. Monsieur Danse, please help him? I am sure you have a hammer and nails somewhere, non?”

She knows he does. She saw them earlier, shoved to one side of a workbench under a heap of Protectron circuits. Curie gestures vaguely in that direction, so that Danse knows she knows.

Every movement Danse makes on his way to retrieve the tools screams irritable reluctance, but the gamble pays off. While the boys put up the flag, Curie picks the one bottle that has water in it and not whiskey, and sticks the handful of hubflowers and carrot flowers into the bottle and sets it aside. She pulls out the jar of soup stock she brought with her, and tips it into the pot.

In the background, the radio hums Doris Day. The General has found more holotapes, and _'Lonely’ Miles_ is wasting no time.

When the flag is up and Preston turns around to see Curie chopping carrots out of a borrowed cooler, he gives an exasperated sigh and grins helplessly. “Well, now I know why your bag was so heavy. You remember making me carry that stuff for half of the trek, right?” A beat. “No offense, but did you really need to bring that heavy chopping board?”

“Oui, otherwise we would make a mess on Monsieur Danse’s lovely desk.”

“You… really don’t have to do all that,” Danse mutters, already knowing what her answer will be.

Curie smiles at them both. “I simply thought it might be nice.” She waggles the knife at him. “Come. Do you have a pocket knife, Monsieur Danse? Help me to cut the vegetables. We are making soup.”

Cooking, Curie has discovered, is not so much like a science as she thought at first. She has calculated how much three people might eat, and how much salt to add, and the temperature needed to cook everything properly, and the times to add different things so that they finish cooking at the same time. The science part is easy. What she cannot calculate, or plan for, is the way three strangers might cook something together.

That is what they are, Curie realises.

She knows Preston only for his job - as co-re-founder of the Minutemen, as the General’s right-hand man, as the mission coordinator. She knows relatively little of who he is beneath that - just that he is polite, motivated, and painfully earnest (it is a good pain, like the butterflies in her chest when her friends speak kindly to her).

Similarly, she knows Danse for what she’s heard: that he was a Paladin, that he is formidable in battle, and that he ‘has a stick up his backside’ _(attribution: Deacon)._ She knew nothing about him personally until the General dropped the holotape into her hands.

Curie is also not sure how well they know her. Probably not very well.

They are strangers, then. But hopefully not for much longer.

“So,” she says, because the silence has gotten tense and the boys don’t seem brave enough to break it, “you are a synth.” She sprinkles some salt into the water from the grinder she borrowed from the Castle’s kitchen.

Danse almost slices his finger. He stills the knife, and his eyes flick up warily at Preston Garvey.

“Uh,” says Preston. “I already… Curie told me on the way over. Wait. That’s not…”

“It’s fine,” he says stiffly, and goes back to peeling tatoes with a combat knife.

“It is,” agrees Curie, and Danse’s silence intensifies. “We have different circumstances, and yet we both are here, as synths, chopping vegetables to make soup with the wonderful Monsieur Garvey. Who is not a synth.”

“Far as I know,” mumbles Preston, uncomfortable with the way Danse is glaring down at his knife. He pauses in the middle of snapping open silt bean pods. “Hey, uh, Curie-”

“We each have very different circumstances, but I feel we have much in common. Perhaps we ought to introduce ourselves properly.” She smiles from one to the other and waggles her knife. “There is never any time for polite introductions out in the wasteland. But now we have the time to make friends. So I will begin: my name is Curie. It once was short for Contagions Vulnerability Robotic Infirmary Engineer, but now I am not a robot and I do not work in a real infirmary. So I am just Curie. Now, people sometimes call me Doc, or Doctor, and so I suppose in lieu of any real qualifications… that is what I am, non?”

Danse says nothing. Behind the desk, Curie nudges Preston’s leg with her foot. He jumps.

“Uh! I, uh - you already know who I am. Preston Garvey, Commonwealth Minutemen.”

Curie stands to tip chopped carrots into the hot water, and flashes him what she hopes is a pointed look. It’s definitely an upgrade to have a face capable of such expressions, but she is still getting used to using them properly.

Preston catches the look and clears his throat. “Oh. Uh... I used to be the last Minuteman, if you can believe that. I met the General… we did some networking… and now the Minutemen are back. So… call us, if you ever need us.” He sighs. “Curie, you both know who I am already.”

“So talk about something we do not know,” she prompts helpfully. “Please add the beans and keep stirring.”

Preston awkwardly shifts to sit on his knee so that he doesn’t have to stand up for the job, and tries not to look at Danse over the top of the pot. Danse looks like he’s not listening, anyway; Preston has never seen anyone so focused on peeling tatoes. “Uh… like what?”

“Anything! For example… hmm…” Curie taps her chin with one finger, then brightens. “Oh! I have spent most of my life inside a Vault. You know this - but I do not think you know the rest. Half of the Vault had been sealed away from the general populace. I worked with scientists to produce a panacea, but in the end I had to conduct my research alone - and once my work was done, I could not leave again for eighty-three years.”

Preston raises his eyebrows. “Wow. So you’re… older than you look, huh?”

“Much, much older!” Curie agrees, amused rather than insulted. “I have many cherished memories of working alongside Doctor Collins and the others. But it is thanks to my new body that I am _able_ to cherish them. And so I do not regret leaving the Vault. I am more than what I was created to be.”

When she finishes, Preston is smiling at her. “I didn’t know any of that. But I agree with you on that last part. If you told me you were a Miss Nanny now, and I didn’t already know, I wouldn’t believe you. You’re way past that.”

Some small part of her, the bit that carried over to the chip in her head but not the greymatter of her brain, tells her to defend General Atomics International. _A Miss Nanny robot is a meticulously-constructed piece of technology. To have been one is no less impressive!_ Curie opens her mouth, realises she can now ignore that part of her, and says, “Thank you! I like to think I have come a very long way already. And so much further to go - the scientific mind excites at the possibilities, non?”

Danse has diced the tatoes by now - not very well, but it’s done - and sweeps them into the pot carelessly. Some flecks from the splash of water hit Preston, who pre-emptively swallows whatever he was going to say next.

“I can see what you’re doing,” Danse comes out of his sulk to say. His voice is oddly gentle. “And I appreciate the effort. But it’s embarrassingly transparent.”

Curie and Preston glance at each other, confused.

“Transparent?” Curie asks tentatively.

Danse sighs and leans back in his seat, reaching for a whiskey bottle. “Does anyone want a drink?”

“Curie doesn’t drink,” Preston offers for her, “but I might join you. If it’s going. Just one, though.”

Danse waggles the bottle at him. “No glasses.”

“No problem.”

Curie watches Preston tip the bottle for a short drink, trying not to calculate the dangers aged whiskey poses to the human body, and sighs. “Please - I am confused. What do you mean by transparent? Is there something I have missed?”

Danse studies her for a moment, like he’s trying to work out what she’s thinking. She can relate to his confusion for altogether different reasons.

“...Your conversation,” he ventures after a while, taking the bottle back from Preston and waggling it between them. “About being more than what you were made to be.”

“Yes?”

“I can see what you’re doing,” he repeats.

Curie feels something new and unpleasant. She has no name for it, but it feels like it fits somewhere between dismay and bewilderment. “What am I doing?” She doesn’t understand. Is Danse being cryptic on purpose?

Preston sighs. “Look, Danse - that’s not how Curie works. She was being sincere.”

Danse frowns at him.

The feeling in Curie’s chest is welling up, and it’s threatening to spill out and make her say something she’ll regret, so instead she tries to bury it. It leaks out anyway, as an angry prickling at the corners of her eyes. “Please,” she tries, “someone explain to me what it is that I have done. This is no longer funny - if it ever was in the first place!” she adds, because Danse doesn’t look like he’s joking and neither does Preston. “I am very confused.”

“Danse was just-”

Danse ploughs on. “I meant your attempts at making me think of myself the same way were heavy-handed. I’m not an idiot.”

“Hey,” Preston warns, “Danse, I don’t think…”

Curie stands up quietly. “I think I will go for another walk,” she muses, her voice wobbling. She wishes she had more control over her vocal output, but she supposes that is part of being human. She whips around before anyone can see her eyes watering and makes her way to the elevator. “The soup should take approximately fifteen more minutes. If I am not back by then, please, eat by yourselves.”

“Curie-”

She hits the button without turning around. The doors close.

Preston watches the marker at the top track the elevator up to ground level, and lets out a soft sigh. He glances at Danse, who is gripping the bottle slightly too hard.

“She wasn’t trying what you think, you know.” He keeps his voice level. “Curie really is just… that’s just how she is.”

“Right,” says Danse, and takes a shot of whiskey from the bottle. He doesn’t sound convinced.

Preston shakes his head. “I’m serious. When have you ever known a GA robot to be that subtle?”

“She’s not a robot any more,” he points out dryly. “She practically said it herself.”

Preston purses his lips, muffling the huff of frustration he lets out a moment later. _“Mm._ Look. I know where you’re coming from, but… Well… Curie’s one hell of a medic, but she’s not so good at socialising. Turns out that’s because she spent eighty-three years alone in a Vault. News to me, too.” He shakes his head. “Do you really think a bunch of scientists would program their medical robot to-”

“To what? Use... comparative psychology?” He’s made the term up, he’s fairly certain, but that doesn’t stop him. “I don’t _know,_ Garvey. Scientists have been doing a lot of things with technology that moral conduct says is questionable at best. That,” he snaps, “is my problem. _In case you weren’t listening.”_ His fingers have curled around the edge of the desk, and if it wasn’t metal they’d be biting into it. His knuckles have turned white. He takes another shot of whiskey.

Preston wants to get up and storm out. He doesn’t. Instead, he reminds himself why he’s here, and it suddenly occurs to him why it’s him the General picked instead of anyone else. Oh, that woman. It was almost cruel how sharp her decisions were. She did not pick him to be Curie’s bodyguard.

He counts backwards from ten. When he speaks again, his voice is calmer.

“...I can’t speak for Curie. But by the way she reacted, I’d guess she doesn’t even _know_ what you’re mad about. This stuff sails right under her radar.” He sighs softly and leans back in his chair. “You don’t want to talk about this with us. And I get that. I do. You don’t _know_ how much I get it. But believe me, neither of us are trying to be sneaky.”

Danse regards him with a cold, calculating look. The trouble with this is that his face is an open book, and Preston can easily see the fear this look is meant to hide.

The soup bubbles audibly. Neither one of them reaches to stir it.

“We just want to help.”

“You can’t,” Danse says automatically.

“Not if you won’t let us,” Preston responds.

They stare each other down. There’s a soft hiss from the hot plate as soup bubbles over and dribbles down the side of the pot.

“Everything I knew about myself,” Danse begins, careful not to look directly at him. “It was all a lie.” It’s almost a challenge.

Preston figures he might as well rise to this one. He finally reaches over to turn off the hot plate with a soft _click._ “Mind if I tell you a story?”

Preston tells Danse about the Minutemen. The _old_ Minutemen, the ones that fell apart and left him to pick up the pieces.

He tells him about Quincy, and traces the story all the way up to Concord, counting off the numbers as he goes. It starts at twenty. For the first time, Danse is silent in a different way; the stubborn anger is gone from his face. He’s neutral, instead, and he’s listening.

Preston talks about Concord. The number drops to five. (The other number, the parallel number he never says out loud, is down to one.)

By the end of it, Danse is staring at him with the strained look of someone desperately trying to cling to solitude. He knows that feeling. He’s been through it. So he waits.

“I’m sorry,” says Danse.

“It’s okay,” says Preston. They both know it’s not. “It’s behind me.” They both know it’s not.

“I…”

Danse hesitates. This is the precipice, and he’s debating whether to leap. Preston Garvey is not his friend. He’s a stranger.

So was the General, once.

“I was chosen,” he says, before he can lose his nerve, “to be leader of Recon Squad Gladius.”

The number starts at seven. It ends at three (one).

“I’m sorry,” says Preston Garvey.

“It’s _alright,”_ says Danse, but he’s fairly sure he’s about to cry, and they both know it’s not alright at all.

“Hey,” says Preston. “You okay?”

Danse inhales sharply against his clasped hands, and then after a brief internal struggle, he says, “No.”

Preston gives him a gentle look. “Hey...”

“Hey,” Danse replies, just to cut him off. A tear streaks his face and he hurriedly dips his face behind his hands.

“It’s okay.”

It’s not. It hasn't been for a long time. That's fine, though, because it's the same for Preston Garvey.

Danse doesn't shrug off the hand on his shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the doris day song mentioned is A Woman's Touch from Calamity Jane (1953). not the most feminist film in the world but by golly it's catchy


	3. progress

Curie stands outside the listening post with her hands around her shoulders. The sun went down a while ago, and with night comes the chill of post-nuclear weather. She counts herself lucky it isn’t a radstorm, breathes into her hands like she’s seen Minutemen doing in the cold, and rubs at her shoulders.

Her tears sting her face in this temperature, but she’s slow to brush them away. There is something incalculably human about crying, she thinks. People don’t know how lucky they are.

She ought to walk, like she said she was going to, but the single lamp outside the bunker only illuminates so far, and the longer she thinks about wandering off the less like a good idea it sounds.

So Curie tries not to dwell on the folly of not bringing a blanket or a coat, and follows the pool of lamplight to its edge, where the concrete of the bunker disappears into the dirt. She grabs a handhold of the sparse grass and weeds and uses it to haul herself up over the lip. Curie settles on the edge of the bunker, dangling her feet over the edge, and sniffs quietly while she assesses everything.

Preston said not to take it personally. And she’s trying, she _is,_ but it’s difficult to dispel the twist in her gut that’s telling her she’s failed. Danse needs help, and she has done something to upset him, and she doesn’t even know how to make it right. How can that be anyone’s fault but hers? How is that _not_ due to a mistake in judgement, or a lack of research, or careless speech?

“No,” she whispers out loud, trying to interrupt that process before it loops.

Unbidden, her mind offers her a memory of Detective Valentine, and decorates it with the smell of hastily stubbed-out cigarettes and the rustle of papers from when she indulged his curiosity and let him read her fieldnotes.

“No. I am not a failure. I am a _researcher at heart._ Good research comes from mistakes.”

The ache in Curie’s chest eases just a bit, and she builds on this by digging for more memories. _Positive things,_ she tells herself. _Your friends have given you so many gifts._

 _You’re a hell of a Doc, lady,_ says Deacon, giving a stifled grunt of pain as she wraps a bandage tightly around his leg. _Ought to take you back to HQ sometime. Maybe you can show Carrington how a real doctor talks to patients._

She does not know who Carrington is, but when she asked, Deacon just told her not to worry. _It doesn’t matter,_ he said. _You don’t need to know all the details, Curie. You’ll have to get used to that if you’re gonna be hanging around with Deacon, Lord of - ow! - Spymastery._

Curie crosses her legs, pulling the hem of her shirt down as far as it’ll go. Her breath comes out in a soft sigh of condensation, lit up by the solitary lamp, and she does it again a moment later just to watch it dissipate.

Deacon teases her often - a lot more than she’d like - and his lies sometimes mix her up so much she ends up flustered and embarrassed, or worse: believing something any regular person would laugh at.

But never something that would put her in danger. She has noticed that. Once, she pointed this out, and Deacon laughed it off and excused himself in a hurry, and she thinks that was the most earnest smile she’s seen on him.

People dearly want others to understand them, she decided that day, but they don’t always make sense.

Curie thinks back on Danse’s holotape. It felt a lot like he was using her as an excuse. Even at first listen she could tell he was thinking of himself just as much as her - maybe more. It had been a clunky apology. But he’d tried, hadn’t he?

_She said the same about me. That I’m more than just a machine. And I… I want so badly to believe that._

He does, Curie realises. He is not being stubborn on purpose. He wants to be a person.

And here she is, product of General Atomics, more of a robot than any third-generation synth, appearing in his safehouse to show off how human she is and how far she’s come.

Curie thinks she might understand a bit better now.

She wipes her eyes on her sleeve again and tucks up her legs, curling up against the cold, and sighs into her knees.

“Curie, you are out of touch,” she tells herself, because maybe no one else is brave enough to say it to her face. She frowns and reaches for an old world saying. _“Rome was not built in a day._ Of course he got angry. You were pressuring him to do something he is already struggling with. Listen to Preston. Do not go in thinking you know best. You have so much to learn about being human.”

Curie takes another deep breath, lifts her head, and exhales a stream of vapour into the lamplight.

To say these things out loud takes conviction. It is like giving oneself a handshake, she decides. She certainly feels more confident.

There’s a soft ding from inside the bunker entrance, and Curie holds her breath while she listens for footsteps.

Preston Garvey emerges from the door, just below and to the side of her feet. She is close enough to knock his hat off. General Atomics did not build her to be this impulsive.

“Curie?” he ventures softly, and then raises his voice. He doesn’t know she’s there. “Curie!”

Impulsivity _is_ a human thing, so Curie slowly and silently stretches out one leg and taps the back of Preston’s hat.

He jumps, fumbling to catch it before it can tumble to the floor, and whirls around in shock. His eyes follow from her outstretched foot to the tear-streaked but earnest smile on her face, and he lets out an audible sigh of relief.

“Thought you wandered off,” he says with a slight shrug of his shoulders, and smiles warmly at her. “Too smart for that, huh? ...We got worried.”

 _We._ Curie wonders.

“It is too dark. I would hate to meet my end by bumping into a bear.”

Preston gives her an odd look that persists until a connection sparks in his head. “Oh. You mean a Yao Guai.”

 _“Demon,”_ she translates, tilting her head. “Perhaps I do. Is that Commonwealth slang?”

Preston chuckles, gesturing vaguely. “I’m never gonna get tired of that.” Curie doesn’t bother wondering what he means; she has already decided to start letting these little cryptic things slide. Hesitantly, Preston offers out his hands. “You coming down? Soup’s ready.”

A quick evaluation tells her that getting up and shuffling back around the side would be safer and less awkward. She smiles at him, gives her face one last dry-off with her sleeve, and drops forwards into his arms. Preston is confident and steady, and slows her descent so that her toes touch down gently on the cracked concrete.

When she turns to lead the way back into the bunker, she feels a soft weight settle on her head. A quick brush with her fingertips confirms it’s Preston’s hat.

“You have every right to be upset,” says Preston, following her in. “I think Danse wants to apologise.”

“I should apologise as well. Perhaps we can flip a coin - to see who goes first?” she suggests playfully. Curie runs her thumb along the brim of the hat. It’s a bit too big and it slips down over her eyes until she pushes it up, but the lamp-yellowed shadow she casts in the bunker doorway makes it look like a part of her. “I am not upset with Monsieur Danse. He is exhibiting signs of great stress, but I know now that he is not being oblique on purpose. It is harder than I expected for me to stay completely logical...”

“He’s in a bad place, Curie.”

“I know,” she says quickly, and tips the hat at a jaunty angle. “I have done some thinking. My approach was ill-advised.”

“By me,” he points out, as they step into the elevator. “I told you to keep going.”

“I am my own woman, Monsieur Garvey. Ask anyone in the Commonwealth.”

 

* * *

 

“Monsieur Danse.” She steps coolly out of the elevator, Preston’s hat removed and held to her chest.

“Curie,” he acknowledges. He’s sitting bolt upright with his hands are flat on the table, like he’s expecting a grilling from a commanding officer, and he waits for her to speak.

Someone has removed the three chipped bowls from her bag and left them stacked on the desk. Curie takes one and begins spooning soup into it, pleased to find it’s still hot. “I am deeply sorry that I lost my temper,” she says. “I did not mean-”

“It was my fault,” he interrupts quickly. She can feel his eyes fixed on her, but she doesn’t look up from serving food. “I read you completely wrong, and I overreacted. Garvey explained everything. I realise now I was-”

He’s interrupted by the click of Curie turning on the radio again. More showtunes blare out from the speakers and she turns it down just enough to speak over Marni Nixon’s dulcet voice.

“No worries, Monsieur Danse,” she declares cheerfully. Shall we eat?” She dips a spoon into each bowl and sets one in front of Danse.

He looks down at it, bewildered.

“Sounds good to me,” says Preston. “Personally, I’m starving. What do you call this, anyway?” He slips casually into the other spare seat and takes a bowl from her.

“Please, Preston, it is just soup. I do not have the ingredients to make anything from my old database.”

“Right, but that just means you get to name it.” Preston lifts the spoon to his mouth and blows on it, then takes a sip. His eyebrows shoot up. “Oh-kayy. That’s…”

“Is it bad?”

“No! _No._ Just…”

Curie tastes hers and pulls a face. “Oh, mon _Dieu!_ It is so bitter!”

“It’s not bad,” Preston replies carefully, and tries it again. “...It’s not _bad._ Once you get used to it.”

“I don’t know what is the matter! None of the ingredients I used…”

Danse listens to them chatter, wondering where his apology went. The two of them are like a tag-team of distractions, and maybe this _is_ an example of transparent tactics, but for some reason it doesn’t make him uncomfortable this time. Curie is making it quite clear that she doesn’t think that apology is a particularly important one. If that’s how she feels, Danse decides he might be able to take her lead.

He fidgets with his spoon for a while and watches them, wondering where he fits into things, if at all, and subconsciously puts the spoon to his lips.

“Oh, my God,” he blurts out.

Curie is laughing at him. (With him?)

“Yeah, it’s got a kick, huh?” Preston flashes him a bright smile, clearly pleased he’s having some kind of reaction that isnt stony-faced silence.

“Not that,” Danse says, placing his spoon back into the bowl. “Curie. Where did you get that soup stock?”

Curie blinks at him. “It was given to me by the General. She said to be prepared for it to taste exotic, but I did not think it would be so bitter.”

Danse stares down at the soup. When he stirs it and looks carefully, there’s an almost-undetectable swirl of something glittering. Soup, he thinks, should not shimmer like that.

“I think General Levi is playing some kind of practical joke,” he mutters. “I’d advise everyone not to keep eating.”

“Oh.” Preston looks down at his bowl and stirs it slightly, trying to see whatever it is that Danse is looking at. “Oh, no. Is that what I think it is?”

“If I’m not mistaken,” Danse grumbles. He looks up at Curie and finds that she’s staring expectantly at him. It’s a cue to explain, and this time, he’s inclined to do so, if only to reassure Curie enough that the distress disappears from her face. That look is starting to get to him. “General Levi stole a cutting sample from the Prydwen’s biology department the last time we were on board.”

Preston clears his throat. “Curie, do you remember a few months ago when the General made tea out of that weird plant she, uh... found? She let Hancock try some, but didn’t offer any to us?”

Curie thinks about it. “Oh, yes! I thought it so strange that Monsieur Hancock would enjoy tea. Stranger still that they did not offer to share. Piper seemed so disappointed. But then of course, it turned out the tea was actually...”

Curie trails off as the realisation dawns on her, and her hand raises to cover her mouth. Her eyes drop to the bowl of soup in front of her.

“It was actually a mild psychotrope,” she murmurs. “Oh. I am so sorry, everyone.”

“Nuh-uh, this is on Levi.” Preston sighs and folds his arms, leaning back in his seat. “She went too far this time. Man. And I was looking forward to eating something that wasn’t Cram.”

“I have a few things lying around,” offers Danse, before he can stop himself. “The General tends to leave… supplies.”

Danse is not sure why he’s suddenly so eager to fix things. He never intended to encourage them to stay longer, but seeing the dismay on Curie’s face and the disappointment on Preston’s is maybe more of a kick to the gut than he expected it to be.

“It’s not Cram, is it?” asks Preston in a mock-suspicious voice, and his eyes glitter with amusement.

A memory rises to the front of Danse’s thoughts: the time Haylen, exhausted, had dozed off by the fire. She’d been so upset at having burned their meal for the night, and Rhys had been disappointed, too, but then he’d broken out a stash of snack cakes and immediately shared them around. Rhys shouldn’t have had them - they took up valuable space and weight, and Danse had specifically told him not to pack anything unnecessary.

Seeing the look on their faces as they’d laughed off Haylen’s mistake and she’d teased Rhys about his sweet tooth, Danse hadn’t had the heart to scold them.

Stale snack cakes had never tasted so good.

“There’s a cooler in the back with a few things in it. But they won’t cook on a hot plate.”

Preston eyes him for a second, and Danse hurriedly breaks eye contact. What he _means_ is, they’ll need to make a fire. He will need to leave the bunker. Levi, he thinks bitterly, is a cunning tactician.

“Okay. I’ll go grab some sticks. Curie, did you bring a flip lighter? Matches?”

Curie bites her lip and shakes her head.

“I’ll figure something out.” Danse stands up, disappearing into the back room for a moment and emerging with a small blue cooler. A little Minutemen symbol has been etched into the lid with something sharp. He almost drops the cooler into Curie’s arms in his attempt not to let their hands touch. “I’ll meet you both topside.”

Curie nods, grateful. “You are a big help, Monsieur Danse.”

He turns away a little too fast. “You can drop the title.”

“Yeah, I’ve tried that, too,” Preston smiles. “Believe me, it doesn’t stick.”

Curie’s cheeks flush pink, and she turns on her heel to follow him into the elevator. “Perhaps I will have everyone call me ‘Mademoiselle Curie’. Then you will all regret your teasing!”

 

* * *

 

The doors slide open, and Danse stands there for almost a full minute before his training kicks in and he lifts his foot over the divide. The cold, (relatively) fresh air of the Commonwealth hits him in a wave. His thumb flips the lid of the lighter open and closed again while he waits for himself to acclimatise.

He’s been above ground since the incident, of course. For one thing, there’s no bathroom down in the bunker, and he’s not an _animal._ Even so, the memory of Maxson waiting for him still greets him with an icy rush each time he steps out of the door. So Danse takes a moment, steels himself, smooths his face into a grim line, and then walks outside.

For once, the ghost of Maxson’s betrayed scowl can’t get a foot in the door. Curie and Preston stand where Maxson did, just a little way off from the lamplight; Curie turns to greet him with a friendly wave over the top of the cooler, and Preston - with his arms full of dry twigs - gives him a polite nod.

“Hey,” says Preston. “Didn’t want to start a fire on your doorstep. Any preference where we do this?”

Danse very carefully unravels the tension in his stance and idly scratches at his chin. (He needs a shave. He’s been all too aware of what a mess he must look, but this just ices the cake.) “Um,” he begins, sounding nothing like a Paladin. “Further from the bunker, if possible. I’d rather not draw attention.”

“No worries. I’ll get us set up. You got a light?”

Danse fidgets with the lid of the lighter again. “Yeah.” He makes no move to come closer.

“...Okay.”

When Preston and Curie turn to walk away, Danse breathes in and out very slowly. He feels unsteady, like whatever part of his mind is responsible for processing which way is up just isn’t in the mood for that job today. He glances to his left, his eyes tracing the empty air down to the space on the floor where the General had stood, clad in his power armour, and defended him with her life.

When he looks up again, Curie and Preston are about to disappear behind a smudge of wasteland foliage. With a pang he refuses to identify as fear, Danse quickly picks up his feet and jogs to catch up.

They end up settling in the lee of a hill about five minutes from the listening post, where there’s more dirt than grass. Preston sets up the fire - he’s good at fieldcraft, apparently - and Danse lights it while Preston goes to collect some more sticks to burn.

Curie perches on a boulder, setting the cooler down between her feet and rummaging in it. “Oh, there is real corn in here!”

“As opposed to fake corn?” Preston enquires jokingly, dumping a small pile of wood within arm’s reach.

 _“Real_ corn,” Curie confirms, lifting a cob and waggling it cheerfully in the air. It’s a lot yellower than the stuff that grows above ground. “Monsieur Danse, did you say the General left all of this? Then I suspect this is from my Vault... How nostalgic!”

Danse flips the lighter open, closed, open. He’s not sure what to say about that, so he stays silent and begins to shuffle rocks around with his foot to circle the fire. Preston dusts off his hands and goes to help him.

“There is some meat. I am… not quite sure what type,” she admits, and plucks out a haunch of _something_ by the paper it’s wrapped in. She holds it up gingerly between finger and thumb.

“Looks like mole rat,” Preston suggests, and she drops it back in the cooler with a grimace. “You don’t like mole rat, huh? It’s okay, not many people do.”

“Oh, no, I _like_ mole rats,” she says cryptically, and moves on before anyone can wonder what that means. “Let me see. There is an egg, but we have nothing to cook it with.”

Preston peers over her shoulder. “Mirelurk,” he identifies. “You can probably just fry that on a rock.”

Curie grimaces. “I would rather not. I think I am happy just to eat corn.”

“What’s on that skewer?”

Curie pulls it out without touching any of the meat and examines it with a frown. “Perhaps squirrel?”

“It’s squirrel,” Danse confirms. “Levi won’t eat iguana.” He pauses in the middle of hauling a larger rock over to the fire, looking pensive. “You’ve heard her theory, right?”

“Ugh.” Preston rolls his eyes. _“Everyone’s_ heard her theory. She banned iguana from the Castle.”

“It is not a bad theory,” Curie admits, handing two skewers to Preston. “I have not seen a single iguana since I left the Vault. _Or_ before. It _is_ a little suspicious, non?”

There’s a moment where all three of them consider how unwilling they are to entertain this line of thought any further, and then Danse clears his throat.

“You’re welcome to anything you find in there. Levi was here just a day ago. I haven’t… touched it yet.” He wasn’t going to, either, but that’s not worth mentioning. He stokes the fire a bit.

“Mind if I cook this time?”

“Please, Monsieur Garvey, go ahead. I would rather not touch raw squirrel.” Curie settles a little more comfortably on her rock, and sighs. “I think I may go vegetarian. Even with the limited choices of the Commonwealth, I think it is possible for me to stay healthy.” She hands a corn cob to Preston next, and watches him carefully set everything up to cook over the fire. Curie gives a wistful sigh. “Perhaps I will bottle that soup and make Madame Levi drink it. She deserves a taste of her own medicine.”

“For what it’s worth, the soup was turning out okay until we found out about the mystery ingredient.” Preston gives a lopsided grin. “Which reminds me. Danse. How’d _you_ know what it was just by tasting it?”

Danse looks up, caught for a moment toying between a few different lies. He clears his throat and fixes his gaze on the fire, and opts to tell the truth instead. “Two days after I reported back to the Prydwen, I was the victim of an initiate’s prank.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Preston’s smile widen. “Someone slipped some of the plant extract into my meal in the mess hall. I had to take the day off.”

“Wow. What’d you do, hide in your bunk?”

Danse prods at the fire with a stick. “Something like that.” He’d lain on his bed, staring at the ceiling and at his hands, for what felt like five minutes. Later, Knight-Captain Cade told him he’d been out of action for five hours. The shock was almost enough to sober him up early. Almost.

“No offense, but that’s kind of hilarious.”

“That’s almost certainly how the initiates felt, until they were reported for misconduct.” A smile rises, unbidden, and he’s not quick enough to hide it. “Lancer Captain Kells had them scraping rust off the Prydwen,” he continues, “from the outside.”

Curie gasps.

Preston’s eyebrows shoot up. He doesn’t laugh out loud, but his eyes are twinkling with amusement. “While it was in the air? Oh, _wow._ The Minutemen have _got_ to step up their discipline game.”

“That is _terrible!”_ exclaims Curie, horrified. “The risk alone seems so excessive…!”

“Not really. They were secured in harnesses,” Danse explains. “It was safe. Just not very pleasant.”

“Well,” Preston ventures, “same crime, same punishment. Now we know where to send General Levi.”

Danse gives an awkward little huff that’s somewhere between a sigh and a laugh, and rests his head on his hand. The fire is warm, but his back is cold, and the difference keeps him content but awake. When he thinks about it, this might be the closest he’s come to being relaxed in a long time.

“I’m sorry for how I acted,” he hears himself saying. “Back in the bunker. I wasn’t fair to either of you.” Before Preston or Curie can try to argue, he waves his hand dismissively. _There. It’s done. I’m done. We’re moving on._ “But - Curie. I have to ask. What did you mean when you said my apology wasn’t… tactful?”

Curie freezes for a second, like she’s reliving the argument - God only knows, he certainly is - but Danse’s expression isn’t accusatory or offended any more. She meets his eyes warily.

“I… Your holotape. It was phrased… badly.”

Danse nods. “Go on.” It doesn’t matter much that Preston is here to listen. He knows his secret, and he bets a lot of other people will, too, sooner or later. Hearing about the rest of the holotape is hardly much of a step further.

Curie fidgets uncomfortably. “I was not trying to be blunt, Monsieur Danse. But the way you spoke on that tape, it made me feel as though I was just an excuse.” She pauses, gauging his reaction. Danse is fiddling with his lighter, but he’s not so nervous that he seems like he wants her to stop. She forges ahead. “I do not think it is a good idea to apologise to someone by making it about yourself.”

“Is that…” He trails off, clears his throat, and tries again. “Is that what I did?”

Curie nods. “Either people like me and Monsieur Hancock and Monsieur Valentine are monsters, or we are not,” she recites from memory, “but if you only want to know because it helps you classify yourself... That is very biased. Do you see?”

Preston can practically hear the cogs turning in Danse’s head, pun unintended.

“I… hadn’t thought of it like that. I didn’t realise.”

“It is like saying that we are only people if it is convenient for you,” she finishes, gathering confidence. Danse seems cowed, but not upset. “That is not a very good apology. We know who we are, Monsieur Danse.” She smiles gently. “I forgive you, of course! But you are not the only one with insecurities, I am afraid.”

Preston busies himself with turning the food over, and politely pretends not to listen.

“You’ve got a point.” Danse flicks the lighter again, then catches himself doing it and stows it in a pocket of his jacket. “I’m… sorry. I didn’t… This is hard for me.”

“I know.”

“How…”

Curie holds his gaze expectantly. It’s too late to backpedal; the sentence already started itself while his guard was down.

Danse sighs. “...How can you be… confident?” Curie tilts her head. “About yourself. About being…”

“Human,” Curie finishes. It’s not the word he was reaching for. She seems to know this, and smiles anyway. “I keep notes.”

“On what?” he probes, not sure he's ready for this conversation.

“On the things people call me. ...The people who matter, of course! My friends. They say things about me, and I... memorise them.” She was almost going to say that she saves the data, but humans don’t save data, they memorise. It seems important to get the terminology right, for Danse’s sake. “I began doing it a little while after I left the Vault. So my list is quite long. For example, Monsieur Garvey and Mademoiselle Wright tell me I am human - a person. And Monsieur Deacon says that I am… a very good doctor. Paraphrased.” She emphasises that carefully. “And Monsieur Valentine tells me I am a researcher at heart. I do not think Monsieur Valentine meant my actual heart. It was metaphorical, like… hm… _take heart,_ or _to be goodhearted._ I am very glad he used that word. I feel… good about it.”

Danse’s gaze drifts to the fire again. “You’re saying I should listen to what other people say about me,” he says slowly. “All my life, my brothers and sisters have said that synths are…”

“Are they your friends?” she asks suddenly, cutting him off before he can launch into Brotherhood propaganda. “Your brothers and sisters. Were you close to them?”

“Yes.” Danse hesitates. He can feel Curie staring intently at him, willing him to work this one out. “No,” he says finally. “Not to all of them. But… when I was in Recon Squad Gladius…”

“You had friends there,” she prompts him. “What did they say about you?”

Danse doesn’t respond for a while. Eventually, he gives a shaky sigh and the smallest shrug of his shoulders. “Scribe Haylen seemed to think I was worth sparing.”

A skewer is waved in his face, and he looks up to see Preston Garvey smiling at him.

“Not that I know her, but Scribe Haylen sounds like someone who knows what they’re talking about.”

Danse takes the skewer, if only to stop Garvey from waggling it at him. He’s not hungry. “I suppose.”

Curie takes the corn Preston offers to her, fidgeting with it as it burns her fingertips just a little bit, and hurriedly blows on it a few times. “Ah - yes, I agree with Preston! So you should memorise that, non?”

Danse turns the skewer over and over between his fingers, staring blankly at it.

She’s right, of course. When he thinks about it, Danse realises he trusts Haylen’s opinion more than his own. There have been times when he overruled her judgement. He regrets all of them.

“That’s not a bad idea, honestly. Collecting all the good things together like that.” Preston takes a bite from his own skewer, and nearly chokes at Curie’s response.

“Yes. Just do not trust everything Deacon says, Monsieur Danse. He thinks you have a stick up your bottom.”

Curie is fairly sure no one is ever going to tell her why that’s funny. But then Deacon was also the one who said not to worry about understanding every detail, so maybe that’s alright. What’s important is that Preston and Danse are smiling, and even without her facial recognition systems, she can tell they’re sincere.

Danse hides his smile behind a fist, pretending quite unconvincingly to clear his throat. “I’ll have to speak to Deacon about disrespecting an ex-Paladin.”

When he finally takes a bite of his skewer, he realises he’s hungrier than he thought. Processing the weight of existentialism can wait until he’s done eating, at least. From across the fire, Curie has obviously caught on to his hastily-masked smile, because she's smiling back at him. With some measure of surprise, Danse finds he no longer suspects there’s anything else behind it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the radio song this time is Getting To Know You, from The King And I (1956). listen y'all, if you don't headcanon that your sole survivor collects old holotapes of musicals and sends them straight to Travis Miles, what are you doing with your life


	4. a bad night's sleep

Danse never intended to sleep, not while uninvited guests are here, and he certainly never intended to be on his bed if he did. Curie is persuasive, in her own strange way.

“There’s only one bed,” he apologised, and the moment Preston’s eyebrow raised Danse regretted sharing this piece of information. There was an implication there. A true one, but he didn’t have to sign off on it. “Levi takes the bed. When she visits.”

“Hey, no questions asked,” Preston had said, irritatingly enough. Like it wasn’t improper. Like Danse was entitled to things like privacy. Things like a personal life.

“I _meant,”_ Danse had snapped sternly, nipping that off in the bud before the Minuteman could make any more assumptions, “Curie should do the same.”

Curie, oblivious, just shook her head. “Oh, non, I would not dream of it! You are _not_ sleeping in a chair again, Monsieur Danse. That is your bedroom, yes?” She pointed over his shoulder at the cleared-out doorway. Danse didn’t know what to say to that. “Then Preston and I shall sleep on the other side of the bunker.”

He’d tried to argue, but between those two, it was like arguing with a brick wall. So Danse eventually pulled out the cover he hadn’t used since he got here (it was always just a little too warm, the bunker’s air flow system wasn’t what it used to be) and a pillow, and left them to sort things out between them.

He’d lain awake for the longest time, never expecting to feel tired, but the lull of hushed voices that drifted through the empty doorway felt familiar. It harkened back to when Gladius was operating in its last hurrah, its remaining three members dug in to the old Cambridge police station, when Danse stood guard by the door and pretended he couldn’t hear Knight and Scribe wasting their designated downtime on idle chatter instead of sleep.

It had never been a waste, though. They needed chatter sometimes. He understands that better now than he ever did.

Danse feels a pull in his chest, and rolls over on the dusty mattress, curling up and tucking his elbow under his head. Sometimes, when he’s alone, he could almost swear he hears whispering. The sound of Curie laughing, soft and stifled, overrides the usual silence of the bunker. He already knows he won’t sleep. But he’ll drift, a little bit, and that’s better than nothing.

In the other room, Preston sits at the pulled-out desk with his feet up and one last pull of whiskey keeping his stomach warm and his head light. By the wall, Curie lies rolled up in the blanket, feeling like - so she declares - an omelette roll. Her head rests on the pillow because Preston insisted on it being hers for the night. She’s not asleep, and they mutter quietly between each other.

“That is _not_ true. You are teasing me.” She hunkers down in the blankets, enjoying the softness of them against her skin even if the floor beneath her is hard concrete. “...Aren’t you?”

“I don’t know, Curie. At least three people say they’ve seen it.” Preston gestures vaguely. “And they’re good men. Even if they were a little drunk at the time.”  
“Ah _-ha!”_ Curie pounces on him immediately. “Alcohol! That is why they think they saw what they saw. Madame Levi would _never_ keep the company of a Super Mutant. She _hates_ Super Mutants.”

Preston considers this for a moment. “Alright. Wait. How do you know she hates Super Mutants?”

“Because she said so!”

“General Levi’s drunk a _lot,_ Curie.”

Curie blinks at him. Only the upper half of her face is visible above the roll of blanket, but her brow creases in concentration. “Oh.”

Preston shrugs. “That’s not to say either of them aren’t trustworthy, though. They say alcohol just takes away the filter. I’m not sure what I think about that.”

Curie sighs deeply into the covers. The pillow smells unfamiliar. She supposes it can only be what Danse’s hair smells like. She wonders briefly what _she_ smells like to other people. (Hopefully cleaner than Danse.)

“Perhaps it _is_ true. But then when would she have been with this Super Mutant? Madame Levi never travels alone.” Neither of them have an answer to that. Curie changes tack. “I have tried speaking to her about the drinking. She does not listen. It is bad for your liver, _and_ for your brain-”

“I know, I know.” Preston holds up his hands to show her he’s not touching the bottle. “I’m done for the night, I promise. I’m not gonna drink all the man’s whiskey.”

Curie hums judgementally. “I do not understand why people drink at all.”

Preston gives the faintest of chuckles. “And hopefully, you never will. Now weren’t you going to sleep?”

She shakes her head. “What about you? I have no access to the appropriate research, but I am sure that sleeping on a chair like that is bad for your back. Come, there is plenty of room in this blanket.”

“Uh-uh. It ain’t appropriate,” Preston explains carefully.

Curie contemplates this for a moment, then flushes beet-red. “Oh! You are thinking you might get an-”

_“No!”_ Preston exclaims suddenly, and seems to realise a second later that the shout might carry through to where Danse is sleeping. _“No-o-o._ Because the medic sleeps first,” he explains, looking pained. “Besides, it’s warm enough in here without cuddling up in a blanket. I don’t know how you can do that.

“Then we will cuddle on _top_ of the blanket, yes?” She blinks. “Oh. That was a strange feeling. I regret saying that, I think.”

“Hey, uh-”

“Sh! Wait. Do you hear that?”

They go silent. Preston stares at her curiously.

Eventually, she sighs and huddles closer to the wall. “I thought I heard something. Like whispering. It was nothing, it seems.”

Preston raises an eyebrow. “Well, I didn’t hear anything...” He glances over in the direction of the dark back room, momentarily regretting their choice of staying in the room without lights that turn off. “Maybe Danse talks in his sleep.”

Curie looks uneasy, but she doesn’t pursue the matter further. She just yawns tiredly into her blanket and then, after a moment’s deliberation, rolls across so that it opens around her and spreads flat on the floor. “Please, Preston. We told Danse we would leave tomorrow. I do not yet have the _instinct_ to cover for you if you fall asleep while we travel.”

Preston glances once in the direction of the dark doorway at the back of the room, and then sighs. “Fine. But back-to-back, okay?”

Curie’s relief is palpable. Preston considers what it would be like, to spend sleepless days in the silent side of a Vault. He tucks himself onto the blanket beside Curie, and she rolls over, then scoots backwards so that their bodies are lightly touching.

“Goodnight, Preston,” she murmurs. “Do not let the… rad-roaches bite.” She sounds like she thinks she’s the first wastelander to make that one up.

 

* * *

 

Danse dreams.

He is in the viewing room. The windows are pitch-dark and he can’t see out. He is wearing a heavy flight jacket that he knows he should not, under any circumstances, be wearing. No one else is on board - not Maxson, not Kells, not a soul. He knows this instinctively.

He turns around, notes that the command deck below is a dark hole in the floor, and instead puts his hands on the metal ladder. There are lights upstairs.

When he scales it and emerges into the belly of the airship, the lights flicker overhead and a chill runs down his spine.

There is not a soul aboard the Prydwen, but something knows he’s here.

 

* * *

 

Curie is arranging dead flowers on the metal graves of her coworkers. They are blue, and she identifies them as Hubflowers. They do not grow in the Vault, and she thinks Dr. Collins might have liked them.

Her hands are much softer now. Friendlier, she thinks. Her bedside care is improved by having soft, human hands. She would have liked to shake hands with Dr. Collins.

When she finishes with the flowers, Curie stands up and pats her hands down on her lab coat and goes to monitor the mole rats.

The screens are dead, and the door is locked. She can’t see out of the glass viewing windows. The cold, clinical lights inside the laboratory flicker on and off, just once, while she's watching them. The Vault’s systems are resilient, but with no one to maintain them, they’ve been precarious for years. This comes as no surprise.

There is a short story that Curie remembers hearing from Dr. Flint. It’s by - (she digs through her database without realising she shouldn't _have_ one) - Fredric Brown. _The last man on Earth sat alone in a room._

There’s a knock on the lab door.

 

* * *

 

Preston blows the dust off the crate of old wine. It clouds up into the air and makes him cough.

_Amontillado._ He’d have liked to share this with the others. Pity it won’t come to that. He fixes one hand around the neck of a sealed bottle and carefully lifts it out of the crate. Might as well get started. It’s not like there’s anything else to drink, which he understands to mean he’s going to die down here. It’s strange how at ease he feels with that.

He slides down against the wall, his gloves catching on the old bricks, and settles on the dirt and sea silt that found its way in some decades before. His radio is useless without anyone manning the tower. He remembers trying it, just for something to listen to. He wishes he could at least hear if the Minutemen made it out without him. They never liked him - bunch of young upstarts, is what they are - but Super Mutants are not a fate he’d wish on anyone.

Ah, well. He’s entirely impotent, as things stand. God help them. God help _him._

The cork is out and the lip of the bottle is pressed to his mouth before he realises something’s wrong.

“Mirelurks,” he mutters quietly. “It was mirelurks.”

Preston Garvey does not know what _Amontillado_  tastes like. He looks down at himself, at the heavy combat armour piece strapped over his shirt and under his rich-blue coat. He takes off his hat, and is disturbed to find it has three corners.

He stands up and drops the bottle back in the crate, not bothering to look for where he flicked the cork. He turns his gaze on the heavy security door at the back of the room. He can’t see around the corner from here, but there’s no sound from beyond it. He taps a few buttons on the terminal, but it’s completely dead.

Preston turns to face the big doors that lead to the west wing of the Castle. The lamps on either side of the doors dim ominously, the corridor going dark just for a moment before they come back on. Suddenly more uneasy than he was, he takes a cautious step forward.

Something heavy throws itself against the doors.

 

* * *

 

Curie awakes panicking. Preston’s warm hands are around her wrists and for a second she has to take steps to slow her breathing, to focus her eyes on Preston’s face, to listen to what he’s saying to her.

“...Easy. Easy. You’re alright. It was just a nightmare.”

“A nightmare,” Curie repeats, seeming to come back to herself. She glances over his shoulder and sees that he’s right - they’re still in the bunker, and Danse is leaning against the desk with one leg crossed casually over the other and a grim look on his face as he watches her recover. _“Oh._ That was _horrible._ Awful! I… I still feel like I am dreaming…” she states weakly. Preston lets go of her wrists slowly, like he’s not sure if she still needs grounding, so she takes one of his hands in hers.

“It’s okay, Curie. Sometimes these things just come to us. Just another downside to being human. It’s not real.”

“It felt real,” she sighs, and Preston’s hand gives hers a light squeeze.

“Hey, Danse. Can you turn the radio on? I think we’d all appreciate some background noise.”

Danse wordlessly leans over and turns the dial until it clicks. The tail end of a _Chordettes_ song filters in, finally dispersing the oppressive silence that was overwhelming the bunker.

“You okay?” Preston ventures after a while.

Curie takes a deep breath and nods curtly, releasing his hand. He stands up to join Danse by the desk.

“Not that it’s my business,” says Preston, “but you don’t look so good, either, Danse.”

“I’ve never slept well.” His answer contains everything it needs to address, in Danse’s opinion. Ideally that would be the end of that conversation.

Curie sits up on the blanket and brings her knees up to her chest. She sighs, exhaling equal parts distress that it happened and relief that it’s over. Her eyes fix sleepily on Danse over the top of her arms. She looks like she’s searching him, even while she’s half-asleep.

Garvey, for all his tactfulness, just grunts. “It sure would be weird if all three of us had nightmares at the same time,” he says, probing.

“Yeah,” Danse responds, clipped. “As unlikely as that sounds.”

“What was yours about, Danse?” asks Curie, and both men let out a resigned breath. She really isn’t so good at context cues yet. Preston keeps meaning to teach her.

Preston clears his throat quickly. “Mine was… I was where General McGann was. Place and time. I think. I was locked in under the Castle. Nothing really happened. It wasn’t so bad, as nightmares go.” It was, though. Sometimes it’s not the content of a nightmare that does the trick.

Curie opens her mouth to speak, and yawns instead. While her eyes are squeezed shut, she doesn’t see the short glance of acknowledgement Danse flashes at Preston. She shuffles in place and tries again. “I was back in the Vault. I think I was wearing the uniform of Doctor Collins. The door was locked again. But… something was different…”

“Just a bad feeling?” Preston offers.

“Yes… something like that. Do you know the short story? About the last man in the world. He is alone in a room, and he hears a knock at his door.”

“And?”

“That’s all. It is very short.”

“No kidding,” says Preston. There’s no humour in it.

Danse remembers what Knight-Captain Cade advised him once, when he’d pulled him aside and declared he was speaking off-record. _In my professional - but unofficial - opinion, Paladin, you need to talk more._ About what? - he’d asked. Cade had stalled then. _Anything,_ he said. _Whatever’s on your mind._

There are things he wishes he'd asked Haylen.

He shifts uneasily in place, uncrosses his legs and re-crosses them. Folds his arms. Stalls a little longer, until Preston is about to say something else, and then forces himself to go, now, before the moment’s gone.

“I was on the Prydwen,” he says, much too loudly.

“Oh,” says Curie.

“I was wearing Elder Maxson’s coat.”

The worst possible thing that could happen, happens: everyone goes quiet. Danse resigns himself to letting the humiliation and discomfort wash over him. He’s not _good_ at this, so he stares blankly at the floor instead and hopes to God someone will say something soon.

“Hell of a coincidence,” Preston points out, after far too long. “Maybe it’s the atmosphere in here. Pre-War places sometimes have that vibe, you know?" He glances around. "It should be light out by now. I think I'll go for a walk. Try to clear my head. Anyone else want to come with?”

Curie hums thoughtfully, and for a moment it looks like she’s going to drift off back to sleep right then and there. She blinks a few times and rubs at her eyes, then looks up at Danse, trying unsuccessfully to catch his eye. “Will Monsieur Danse join?”

Danse considers the alternative. Stay, and either sit there suffering through Miles’ pre-recorded night-time mix, or else fall asleep and dream the same dream again. This dream is recent, but it’s not the first time he’s had it and he doubts it’ll be the last.

For a split second, the radio signal lapses into the soft whine of static. All three parties tense up, despite their best efforts, before the music comes back on.

Danse's tone is stiff. “I _suppose_ that’s not a bad suggestion.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Chordettes - Mr. Sandman this time. will i keep picking a new ironically-relevant song for every chapter? maybe!!! probably. not sure what i'm gonna do if there's suddenly no radio in a chapter and i end up with no excuse to shoehorn a song into it. guess i'll just die
> 
> anyway if you're not sure why this got weird then i suggest at least reading the terminal in Listening Post Bravo. honey you've got a big storm coming
> 
> this chapter was short whoops!!


End file.
